The second experiment was carried out on the South Downs. The containers were the same, the ceremonious interchange repeated, only the area staked out covered about four times as much ground as the first. We departed as before, leaving the meadow apparently unharmed, returning to find the square dead and wasted.
Once more I urged her to turn the compound directly upon the Grass. "What if it isnt perfected? What harm can it do? Maybe it's advanced enough to halt the Grass even if it doesnt kill it."
She stabbed at her chest with the toothpick. "Isnt it horrible to live in a world of intellectual sucklings? How can I explain what's going on? I have a basic compound in the same sense ... in the same sense, let us say, that I know iodine to be a poison. Yes, that will do. If I wish to kill a man—some millionaire—and administer too little, far from acting as a poison it will be positively beneficial. This is a miserably oversimplified analogy—perhaps you will understand it."
I was extremely dissatisfied, knowing as I did the rapidly worsening situation. The Grass was in the Iberian Peninsula, in Provence, Burgundy, Lorraine, Champagne and Holland. The people were restive, no longer appeased by the tentative promise of redemption through Miss Francis' efforts. The BBC named a date for the first attack upon the Grass, contradicted itself, said sensible men would understand these matters couldnt be pinned down to hours and minutes. There were riots at Clydeside and in South Wales and I feared the looting of my warehouses in view of the terrible scarcity of food.
It wasnt only the immediate situation which was bad, but the longrange one. Oil reserves in the United Kingdom were practically exhausted. So were non-native metals. Vital machinery needed immediate replacement. As soon as Miss Francis was ready to go into action the strain upon our obsolescent technology and hungerweakened manpower would be crippling.
The general mood was not lightened by the clergy, professionally gloating over approaching doom, nor by the speculations of the scientists, who were now predicting an insect and aquatic world. Man, they said, could not adapt himself to the Grass—this was proved to the hilt by the tragedy of the Russian armies in the Last War—but insects had, fishes didnt need to, and birds, especially those who nested above the snowline, might possibly be able to. Undoubtedly these orders could in time produce a creature equal if not superior to Homo sapiens and the march of progress stood a chance to continue after an hiatus of a few million years or so.
The combination of these airy and abstract speculations with their slowness to produce something tangible to help us at this crisis first angered and then profoundly depressed me. I could only look upon the whole conglomeration—scientists, politicians, common man and all—as thoroughly irresponsible. I remembered how I had applied myself diligently, toiling, planning, imagining, to reach my present position and how a fraction of that effort, if it had been exerted by these people, could stop the Grass overnight.
In this frameofmind my thoughts occupied themselves more and more with the idea I had uttered during my illness. To write a history of the Grass would at least afford me an escape from the daily irritation of concerning myself exclusively with the incompetents and blunderers. Not being the type of person to undertake anything I was not prepared to finish, I thought it might be advisable to keep a journal, first to get myself in the mood for the larger work and later to have a daytoday account of momentous events as seen by someone uniquely connected with the Grass.
95. July 14: Lunch at Chequers with the PM. Very gloomy. Says Miss F may have to be nationalized. Feeble joke by undersecretary about nationalization of women proving unsuccessful during the Bolshevik revolution. Ignoring this assured the PM we would get a more definite date from her during the week. Privately agreed her dilatoriness unpardonable. I shall speak to F tomorrow.
Home by 5. Gardeners slovenly; signs of neglect everywhere. Called in S and gave him a good goingover; said he was doing the best he could. Sighed for the good old days—Tony Preblesham would never have shuffled like that. Shall I have to get a new steward—and would he be any improvement?